PRESS AVAILABILITY BY THE PRESIDENT
AND PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN
Parliament
Ottawa, Canada

12:05 P.M. EDT

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Madames et monsieurs, ladies and
gentlemen, it's a great pleasure for me to receive the President of the
United States in Canada for this occasion of opening the new embassy,
and for the President to come and make a speech in Mont Tremblant on
federalism.

As you know, the relations between Canada and the U.S. are
excellent, and the President is here for his fifth visit to Canada since
he started in office. And when I asked him to come to the conference at
Mont Tremblant I had to call upon our longstanding friendship. And
everyone is very pleased that you, the leader of the greatest democracy
and the greatest federation, should come to give your point of view.

the President of the United States to come and make this
statement, the speech in Mont Tremblant, because he has been -- he is in
a very privileged position. He has been the governor of a state, of
Arkansas, and he has been the President of the Conference of the
Governors, and he has been, on the other side, the President of the
United States. So he knows the functioning of a federal system inside
out.

And I'm sure that the people coming from around the world will
benefit very strongly from his experience. And I want to say thank you
very much. And I take it as a great sign of friendship for Canada and
for myself that you have accepted to be with us today.

If you want to say a few words.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. First of all, Prime Minister, thank you
for welcoming me back for my fifth trip to Canada since I've been
President.

I would like to be very brief, and then we'll open it to questions.
I'm here today to dedicate our embassy, to speak at the Prime Minister's
federalism conference, and to have the chance to meet with Prime
Minister Chretien. I want to just mention two or three issues.

First of all, I'm profoundly grateful for the leadership shown by
Canada in our common efforts to promote world peace: the work we've
done together in Haiti, the work we've did together in Bosnia, the work
we did together in Kosovo with NATO, and the efforts that we're all
making in East Timor -- which is still a difficult situation, where
we've got to get all the refugees home and safe and where we strongly
support Secretary General Annan's efforts to establish a United Nations
program there.

One of the things that we have worked on together is our efforts in
nonproliferation. And Canada and the United States agree with all of
our NATO allies that the comprehensive test ban treaty is the right
thing to do, it's the interest of the United States.

There has been far more controversy about it in our country than in
other countries, including other nuclear powers who are our allies. And
I was -- we've been trying to have a debate on this for two years, but
it is clear now that the level of opposition to the treaty and the time
it would take to craft the necessary safeguards to get the necessary
votes are simply not there.

So I hope that the Senate will reach an agreement to delay the vote
and to establish an orderly process, a non-political orderly process, to
systematically deal with all the issues that are out there and to take
whatever time is necessary to do it.

With this treaty other nations will find it harder to acquire or to
modernize nuclear weapons, and we will gain the means to detect and
deter. If we don't have the treaty, the United States will continue to
refrain from testing, and we'll give a green light to every other
country in the world to test, to develop, to modernize nuclear weapons.

I think it's clear what we ought to do, but it's also clear that we
ought not to rush this vote until there has been an appropriate process
in the Senate.

So those are the major foreign policy issues I wanted to mention.
The other thing I wanted to say is, I think Canada and the United States
will be working very closely to try to reinvigorate the movement to
expanded trade around the world. If we're going to really see the rest
of the world's economy pick up, and enjoy the kind of prosperity we have
enjoyed in the last few years, we've got to make the most of this WTO
ministerial. We've got to make the most of Canada's hosting the Free
Trade Area of the Americas ministerial. And I think that's important.

Now, as to our bilateral relations, I wanted to mention one thing
that we talked about in our meeting. We have agreed to have a more
intensive dialogue on border issues, through a new forum we creatively
called the Canada-United States Partnership, or CUSP. This will enable
us to have local businesses, local communities, talk about managing
border issues, and figure out how we can resolve some of the hassles
people have with the vast volume of goods that go back and forth across
the border, and the vast number of people.

So, I thank you. And you've already said why you invited me to the
federalism conference. And I can tell you, I was a governor for 12
years, and no matter how hard you try, you will never solve all the
problems of federalism. So the best thing you can do is to paraphrase
Winston Churchill and say it is the worst form of government, except for
all the others.

Q Mr. President, the Senate Majority Leader has stated that he
would consider taking the test ban treaty off the table, withdrawing it
from consideration under the caveat that it would not be reintroduced in
the 106th Congress. Would you, sir, in order to preserve this treaty,
be willing to give up ownership of it to the next Congress and the next
administration?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I don't own it. And insofar as I do,
we always will, since we negotiated it and the United States was the
first to sign it. But it isn't mine, it belongs to the world. And I
think the whole nature of your question shows what's wrong with the way
the Senate has treated this.

They've treated this like a political document. They've treated
this whole issue like a political issue. They went out and got people
committed to vote against the treaty before they knew the first thing
about it. And what I have said is -- I don't understand what he's
worried about. This thing could never have come up in the first place
if he hadn't agreed to it. And I wouldn't bring it up unless I thought
we could ratify it, because I won't treat it politically.

So this whole thing is about politics. It's about burn us in 1999,
because we're against the treaty that 80 percent of the American people
support; but please don't burn us again in 2000. It's political. This
treaty is not going to come up until we think we can pass it. And it
won't come up until they treat it seriously.

Every serious American treaty, for example, has the legislative
language attached as safeguards, just like we did in the Chemical
Weapons Treaty, so that everyone understands exactly what it means. In
this treaty they actually went out of their way to try to keep
safeguards from being attached to it so that they could have the maximum
number of votes against it.

So I will give you a nonpolitical answer. I will say again, they
should put it off and then they should agree to a legitimate process
where Republicans and Democratic senators think about the national
interest. They have total control over when it comes up, not me. If it
had been up to me we would have started on this two years ago. We would
have had six months of hearings, two weeks of debate, lots of
negotiations and this whole thing would have been out of the way a year
and a half ago.

It was not out of the way because that's the decision they made not
to bring it up. They control when it comes up. So you're asking the
wrong person whether it would come up next year. You should turn around
and ask Senator Lott whether it would come up next year.

What I want to do -- I don't care when it comes up, except when it
comes up, I want it to come up as soon as we can, pass it, with a
legitimate process. As messy as this has been, this has illustrated to
the American people, beyond any question, that this whole deal has been
about politics so far.

Now, there are some people who are honestly against this treaty.
But we haven't been able to hear from them for two years, and we haven't
been able to answer them, and we haven't been able to work on it. So I
think it's been a very healthy thing to bring it up. But now we ought
to do what's right for America, take it out of politics -- this is not
going to be a huge issue next year in the election, one way or the
other. We should deal with this on the merits. They should agree to a
process -- then they control when it comes up.

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: And I would like to add that we all have
an interest in that, and all your allies to America, we will want this
process to be terminated as quickly as possible, because there's a lot
of other nations that have to live with the consequences of what the
American Congress will do. And peace in the world is extremely
important for our neighbors, too.

Q Prime Minister, did you discuss the concerns that Canada's
defense industries have had with having to get licenses? And did you
get any answer from the President?

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Yes, we discussed and we have found an
agreement. And the agreement will be in details made public by Madam
Albright and Mr. Axworthy --

Q Was it important to get an agreement? Why?

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: But, yes. It's always important when you
have a problem to find a solution. And we found a solution. That's
all. (Laughter.)

Next. Next.

Q Mr. President, today a London magistrate ruled that former
Chilean dictator Pinochet be extradited for trial in Spain. The CIA has
been accused of withholding documents that are said to show that the
United States encouraged the coup which installed Pinochet in power, and
that the CIA maintained close ties to Pinochet's repressive security
forces. Will you order that the release of those documents be sped up?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I believe we've released some documents, and
my understanding -- before I came out here, I was told that we're about
to release some more. So I think we ought to just keep releasing
documents until we -- I think you're entitled to know what happened back
then, and how it happened.

And obviously, the governments of Spain and the United Kingdom are
following their own legal systems. I would point out, in defense of the
people of Chile, is that they actually succeeded in moving away from the
Pinochet dictatorship, and solving the problem they had in a way that
allowed them to make a transition to parliamentary democracy. And I
think that even the people that spent their whole lives opposed to
Pinochet, they have some -- they're trying to figure out, now, what the
impact on their democracy will be of all these actions.

But the United States has supported the legal process, and we
continue to do so. And we support releasing documents in an appropriate
fashion. And we support the democracy which now exists in Chile.

Paul?

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Okay, en Francais --

THE PRESIDENT: I've got to take a couple of the Americans -- go
ahead. France, yes, go ahead.

Q Mr. Clinton, I want to know if your meeting with Mr. Bouchard
today is an indication of any change in U.S. policy towards Quebec
sovereignty? And secondly, if Mr. Chretien asked you anything about
that meeting today?

THE PRESIDENT: No, and, no. That's the short answer.

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Thank you. Next. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: The short answer, no and no. I did meet with him
when he was in opposition about four years ago. He is the premier of
the province. We're going there; he's the host; it's a courtesy and I
think I should do it. But there has been no change in our policy,
whatsoever.

Q First of all, Mr. President, are you going to meet Senator Helms'
demand that you actually submit what you announced here today in
writing? How badly has this hurt the United States --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm sorry, what --

Q Senator Helms' demand that you submit it in writing to him.

THE PRESIDENT: Submit what?

Q The CTBT -- I'm sorry -- the CTBT, the withdrawal of it in
writing. He's asked for that. How badly has that hurt a U.S.
leadership role in arms control? And what's the message from India
where the world's largest democracy just overwhelmingly reelected the
government that you criticized heavily for conducting nuclear tests?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, first of all, if you look at India,
you have to see the people voted for that government for all kinds of
reasons. And what I believe is -- look, France conducted a nuclear test
before they signed the treaty. What I believe is that the United States
does not sign the treaty and show a little leadership here, why should
the Pakistanis and the Indians do it?

Ever since the end of World War II, and beginning with the election
of Dwight Eisenhower, we have had a bipartisan commitment to leading the
world away from proliferation. It has never been called into question
until the present day. Never.

Now, we had to work for a very long time to get the Chemical
Weapons Convention passed, which is very important. But Senator Helms
and the others followed a legitimate process. I never had a doubt that
the objections that they raised and the safeguards they wanted were
absolutely heartfelt and serious. This treaty was never treated
seriously. They took two years, had no time for hearings, said I'll
give you eight days, and later we discovered -- after they said that,
that that was offered only after they had 43 commitments on a party-line
vote to vote against the treaty from people who hadn't heard a hearing
and hadn't even thought about it -- most of them.

So they want me to give them a letter to cover the political
decision they have made that does severe damage to the interest of the
United States and the interest of nonproliferation in the world? I
don't think so. That's not what this is about. They have to take
responsibility for whether they want to reverse 50 years of American
leadership in nonproliferation that the Republicans have been just as
involved in as the Democrats, to their everlasting credit.

Now, they have to make that decision. I cannot bring this treaty
up again unless they want to. I have asked them to put it off because
we don't have the votes. I have talked to enough Republicans to know
that some of them have honest, genuine reservations about this treaty,
and they ought to have the opportunity to have them resolved, instead of
being told that they owe it to their party to vote against the treaty
and that the leadership of their party will do everything they can to
keep us from writing safeguards into the treaty which answer their
reservations, which is what we do on every other thing.

So I don't want to get into making this political. But they
shouldn't tie the Senate up or themselves up in knots thinking that some
letter from me will somehow obscure from the American people next year
the reality that they have run the risk of putting America on the wrong
side of the proliferation issue for the first time in 50 years. And
they want to do it and then they don't want to get up and defend it
before the American people in an election year. That's what this whole
thing is about. That is the wrong thing to do.

We don't have the votes. I'm not going to try to bring it up
without the votes. Let them take it down, but also agree on a
legitimate process to take this out of politics. I will not criticize
them as long as they are genuinely working through the issues, the way
we did in the Chemical Weapons Treaty.

They're entitled to advise and consent. They're entitled to take
all the time they want. But nobody hit a lick at this for two years.
And then they tried to get it up and down on grounds that were other
than substantive, and that's wrong. And it's bad for America. It has
nothing to do with me and my administration. I wouldn't care who got
the thing ratified, as long as we did it in the right way.

Q On your throne speech next week, sir -- on your throne speech
next week, do you see it as charting some kind of grand new course for
the millennium? Or is it just more of the same? (Laughter.)

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Yes, it will be -- if Canada is
considered as the best country in the world. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Are you sure he's not one of ours? (Laughter.)

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: You know, they're complaining because I
keep telling them that Canada's been considered, Mr. President, as the
best country in the world to live in. I'm sorry to tell you to that.
(Laughter.) And I want to carry on in the 21st century with the same
thing, and they say I have no vision. Imagine if I had a vision.
(Laughter.) So you will see.

Q Mr. Chretien? Mr. Chretien?

THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead. (Laughter.) I'm sorry. That was great.

Q You've been asked to sell oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum
Reserve to fight rising heating oil prices as the winter comes. Do you
think this is a good idea, and do you agree with Senator Schumer that
OPEC has been engaged in price gouging, to raise the prices?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we should look at the reserve, and the
question of whether, if we released some oil from it for sales, we could
moderate the price some.

I think that the states in the Northeast, as you know, are
unusually dependent upon home heating oil and, therefore, are the most
sensitive to oil prices. But it's also true that the price of oil was
historically low for a good long time. And it's made a modest rebound,
now.

I'm grateful that it hasn't put any inflation in our economy and so
far we can manage it. But we have to be sensitive to the people who are
disproportionately affected by it. And I have not reached a decision
yet, because I haven't been given a recommendation yet, about whether we
could have any appreciable impact on the Americans that are most
disproportionately affected.

One of the reasons we always fight hard for the LIHEAP program,
apart from what the summertime can do to people all over America, is
that we know these people in the Northeast have a problem that no other
Americans have, with the impact of the oil prices. It hits them much,
much harder. So we're looking at it.

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Thank you. Madame?

Q This morning you talked about rule of law, respect for rule of
law being one of the fundamental principles Canada and the U.S. share.
I am wondering, in that context, if the President could tell us what he
thinks of Mr. Bouchard saying that Quebec could secede without regard to
the Canadian Constitution, or the Supreme Court ruling last year, which
said they must have a clear majority vote yes and a clear question.
Would the U.S. ever recognize a sovereign Quebec under those
circumstances?

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: I think that it's for me to reply. I
think that the rule of law will apply to Canada. We have a judgment of
the Supreme Court of Canada, which said very clearly that the question
has to be clear and the majority has to be clear. And if there is a
clear will expressed, then only after that, that negotiations could
start.

So the rule of law will be applied. The question will have to be
clear, and the majority will have to be clear. And I know that if they
have a clear question, the President of the United States will never
have to make a decision on that.

Q Excuse me. I would like to say something. You've had a lot of
disasters lately, and so has the world. And I'm with Christian News,
and I would like to ask you, have you thought that possibly this is a
message from above that there is moral decay, that there is abortion,
that there is violence? I was wondering if you had given it some
thought.

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I have. You know, we -- particularly
because of all the millennial predictions. But I think the fact is that
some of these natural disasters are part of predictable weather
patterns, and the others have been predicted for more than a decade now
by people who tell us that the climate is warming up. And I think that
the real moral message here is that as we all get richer and use more of
the resources God has given us, we're being called upon to take greater
care of them. And I think that we have to deal seriously with the
impact of the changing climate.

I was just in New Zealand at the jumping-off place for 70 percent
of our operations in Antarctica, the South Pole, talking about the
thinning of the polar ice cap there and the consequences it could bring
to the whole world.

So I believe that insofar as these natural disasters are greater in
intensity or number than previous ones, the primary warning we're
getting from on high is that we have to keep -- to use the phrase of a
person I know reasonably well -- we have to keep Earth in the balance.
We have to respond to this in an appropriate way.

Yes.

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Okay. And that will be the last one.

THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead.

Q Sir, you talked about the Republicans playing politics with this
arms band treaty, or weapons testing ban treaty. Are you talking about
normal partisan politics, just Republicans versus Democrats? Are you
talking about the kind of politics where some Republicans -- maybe not a
lot of them, but some will say, I'm sorry, Bill Clinton is for it, I
feel so viscerally that I despise Bill Clinton, I'm not going to go
along with something that he wants that much and I'm not going to give
him a victory during his administration on something this important?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think that's what's going on. I mean, it
might be, but I don't think so. That sounds like Wile E. Coyote and the
Roadrunner, you know? (Laughter.) But I don't think that's what's
going on.

I think you have the following things. I think you have -- I will
say again -- you have some Republicans who have thought about this and
listened to people who aren't for it and really believe it's not the
right thing to do. I hate it when we have fights; we're always
questioning other people's motives. There are people who genuinely
aren't for this. I think they're dead wrong and I think it would be a
disaster if their view prevailed, but I believe that's what they think.

Now, in addition to that, however, this process -- the Democrats
were frustrated because for two years -- that's why I don't think the
second part of your thing is right -- for two years they've been trying
to bring this treaty up for a hearing, during which time we did ratify
the Chemical Weapons Convention. And they could never even get
hearings. So there was something about this thing that they didn't want
to give hearings on.

So then the Democrats agreed to what they knew was a truncated
hearing schedule -- almost no hearings -- and debate schedule, only to
find that basically a sufficient number of votes in the Republican
caucus had been locked down for reasons of party loyalty, whatever their
motives were, from people who couldn't possibly know enough about the
treaty right now to know they were against it on the merits.

Now, maybe it's they don't want some alleged victory to come to the
administration during the pendency of the political season. Maybe
that's it, maybe not. My point is, I don't care about that. I don't
care who gets credit for it. If they adopted it I'd be glad to say it
was Trent Lott's triumph. It's six and one-half dozen of the other to
me. What I want to do is to leave this country with a framework -- my
country -- with a framework for dealing with the major security problems
of the 21st century.

I believe that there will still be rogue states that want nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons. I, furthermore, believe that there
will be enemies of all nation states -- terrorist groups, organized
criminals, drug runners -- who will be increasingly likely to have
access to miniaturized, but powerful weapons of mass destruction. And
what I would like to leave office doing is not getting credit for
anything -- I don't give a rip who gets the credit for it. What I want
is the Chemical Weapons Convention to be enforced, the Biological
Weapons Convention to have teeth added to it so it actually means
something, and this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to be in place so at
least we have a shot to reduce the number of nuclear states and the
sophistication of their weapons and their ability to use them. That's
the whole deal with me.

Because I think that our successors are going to have a whole lot
of headaches from all these groups, and we need to minimize risk because
as societies grow more open they'll be more vulnerable to being
terrorized by people who have access to this. That's the whole deal
with me. I don't care who gets credit for it, I just want there to be a
framework for dealing with it.

So if they take more than a year to deal with this, if there is a
legitimate process of working through, that's okay with me. If there is
an emergency in the world where the rest of the world -- it looks like
we're going to have 10 other people try to become nuclear powers, and
they've had two months of hearings or three months of hearings, and I
think there's some reason we ought to vote -- that goes back to your
question -- I don't want to say on the front end, yes, I'll play the
same political game, and no matter what, we won't vote next year, no
matter what other developments we see on the Indian Subcontinent or in
other places.

But this thing can't come up for a vote if they don't bring it up.
And I'm not going to willfully try to get it up if I think it's going to
get beat. That's the only thing I want to -- I'm sorry to bore our
Canadian friends with a discourse to American politics. And the other
thing, the United States cannot afford to relinquish the leadership of
the world in the cause of nonproliferation.

So if they want to strengthen the treaty, there are all kinds of
vehicles through which we can do it. We do it on every other treaty.
And if they want to take months, if they want to take a year -- whatever
they need to take. Just play this straight. I'm not going to be out
there -- there's no down side for them to playing it straight.

But I will not say in advance, no matter what -- no matter what
happens in the world, no matter what unforeseeable development there is,
no matter what other countries are about to do -- no matter what, I
would not ask you to deal with this next year, because on the merits
there might be a reason. If it's just politics, we won't, because I'm
not going to bring it up if we can't win.

PRIME MINISTER CHRETIEN: Perhaps, Mr. President, I would like to
add that when we were at the summit in Birmingham, and it was at the
moment that India was about to do the experiment, and Pakistan was to
follow, we were all extremely preoccupied about it. And it is a problem
that concerns the world. And it's not only the United States --
everybody around the globe has a stake into that.

And, for me, I cannot agree more than the President that the
leadership of the United States for the allies is extremely important.
And keep up the good fight.